Let’s walk through the deal logic. Why look to cleave off the historic box office unit from the data giant Comscore into its own company in a $70 million cash deal?
ANANT GUPTA: My background, I’m one of the co-founders of Advaya Capital, we started a little over two years ago as an investment firm looking for assets that are high quality as well as the ones that we think we can help accelerate the growth on. What we found was a gold standard data set that provides this box office data across the industry to every part of the ecosystem and that has been a very small part of a larger enterprise within Comscore and has had to compete for resources within that broader enterprise. Because of that, there probably are things that they could have been investing in and could have been doing in order to meet some of the needs of the industry that haven’t been done.
The deal unwinds a big merger ten years ago and restores the Rentrak name, which box office insiders will be familiar with. How have you messaged the deal to major studios?
GUPTA: Our messaging to the studios has been, “Look, we understand that there have been things that this data could be helpful to answer questions and help you guys drive your businesses and so tell us how we can be better. Tell us what works and what doesn’t.”
Chris, you’re joining the Rentrak board of directors from the other side of the box office equation, running distribution at Paramount and 20th Century. What was your role in getting this deal done and what are you working on now at Rentrak?
CHRIS ARONSON: When I left Paramount I really started being an advisor to the company from an insider’s point of view, lending my perspective and expertise. But the deal itself was not an easy one, I would say. But Anant and his team at Advaya persevered and got the deal done. Rentrak is the gold standard for global box office data, and — I don’t want to say that it ever lost that moniker — but we want to polish it up for sure and return it to the single, trusted neutral third party handler of all of this data. So I’m working with the company to introduce them to the stakeholders that I’m familiar with and to sort of help pave the way for Rentrak’s future.
When you say it wasn’t an easy deal to get done, is that untangling the assets from broader Comscore?
GUPTA: With any carve out kind of transaction, there’s a whole host of stand-up things to get the company to be able to operate on its own. And so there’s definitely complexity with some of that, that we’ve had to grapple with. But it’s also just, we’re putting together the plan basically for what we want to do so that we could hit the ground running with kind of the activities we wanted to do to help enhance the products and services.
ARONSON: The previous iteration of Rentrak was much more embedded, if you will, with the studio side because they were really one of the significant players on the home entertainment monitoring and measurement side. So there was sort of a fit for Rentrak to get into the theatrical side, which is where I came in. I would just say because of Comscore’s multifaceted business, I don’t think the movies’ division kept up with times, shall we say.
Could you give an example of not keeping up with the times?
ARONSON: Well, when we started in 2001 and we launched in 2002, box office data was still a very incomplete collection process. I don’t remember the percentage of theaters that were being reported to Nielsen, who was the only player in the space at that time, but I don’t think it was more than 50 percent, probably at the most. Today Rentrak collects domestically 99 percent and I think close to 95 percent of the international box office.
That was sort of the seismic shift, but it was a very base level business that that Nielsen EDI was running at that time. And we modernized it then and basically went to our customers and said, “Look, we can collect more data, but how do you want to see it presented?” And no one had ever done that before. So we started, in conjunction with our partners, developing suites of reports that would help them do their day-to-day business and their longer term planning for their business. So that’s just one aspect of data analytics in today’s world.
How much of that is post-game, as in after a movie has come out, and how much of it is pre-game, as far as looking ahead on upcoming titles or slates?
GUPTA: What we’re talking about doing is really bringing a lot of the latest and greatest tools to help build products and functionality here that can help the studios understand their data and understand what is going on in the box office in a much more granular and better way than has been done historically. And that goes across different functions within the studio, whether that be greenlighting the next film, whether that be how you spend your next marketing dollar, whether that be how you think about what screens you put your movie on and which auditoriums and which cities.
Most of the things that Rentrak has been doing to date has been focused on kind of the post-game side of things, I would say. I think there’s a huge opportunity on the pre-game side, using your kind of terminology here, that there’s a ton that we could be doing and bringing some of that data to help people understand who are buying tickets. Obviously today the way buying tickets looks is very different than 25 years ago, let’s say, when people would just show up at the box office and buy a ticket.
ARONSON: Not to mention the number of format choices that are available now.
Despite vast disruption in the industry, box office — particularly opening weekends — is still the shorthand Hollywood uses to declare hits and flops. Obsession filmmaker Curry Barker recounted to THR that, “I’m not going to turn off my phone. I’m going to check the numbers every moment I can” in those first few days. How do think about how box office data shapes the narrative and how that’s evolved?
ARONSON: You’ve stated the fact. It is still the currency that — I think it’s a little too black-and-white to determine whether it’s a hit or a flop, because, as you well know, the economics are different for every film and an opening for a Backrooms at a certain level is much different than an opening for a Mandalorian and Grogu.
But it is still the currency that is used to judge success or failure. I think New Rentrak’s role is to help shape that narrative for our customers and to be able to give them the most amount of information to help them shape their own narrative, because it’s it’s really up to them to shape the narrative of success or failure for their films. I think we’re that trusted neutral third party who wants to supply the relevant information to inform them.
Rentrak has also mentioned using AI to build out predictive analytic capabilities for box office. What does that look like in practice?
GUPTA: If you can marry some of the marketing data — how people are marketing their movies with what performance, how it drives performance at the box office — that can be very valuable and help you forecast better how your film is going to do. But, more importantly, it’ll help you also drive a decision as to how you should allocate your marketing budget, for example.
AI is great at being able to take large sets of information and process it and analyze it and create outcomes if you know what you’re doing. We’ve got 50 years of experience looking at this data, creating analytics on it, understanding how it’s evolved, understanding the nuances to the data, where there are gaps or where there could be inconsistencies or anything like that, that can affect an analysis and affect the outcomes, and ultimately, we could bring all that insight to to the studios or to the theater chains.
It seems like major studios are circling the wagons around a 45-day theatrical window after retreating a bit during the pandemic. How will that factor in to overall box office?
ARONSON: I have long maintained that the lack of standardization of windows has been very detrimental to the industry. I think most objective stakeholders would say that pre-COVID, the windows were too long. But I think if the industry does in fact coalesce around a 45 day window, you’re going to see a much healthier theatrical environment.
Because there was one thing about the windows pre-COVID is they may have been too long, but they worked. There was not an expectation that a movie’s going to come to the home in a matter of a couple of weeks. So the fact that windows became all hodgepodge, I think the net-net of that was losing sales, whether it’s a theatrical ticket or whether it’s a transaction at home, or whether it’s a streaming subscription. But we’ll certainly be helping diving into that data.
In May, the largest exhibitor, AMC Theatres, reported its highest level of attendance, 25.5 million, since pre-pandemic May 2019, when Avengers: Endgame unspooled on screens. Bigger picture, how do you see attendance trends going this year?
ARONSON: The domestic theatrical business is considered a mature business so it’s always become cyclical in the sense of, are there movies that people want to see? I think for the industry at large the most encouraging trend is in the Gen Z and Gen Alpha area where the preliminary research is showing, particularly on Gen Alpha, that that generation wants to put their devices down and wants to spend time with their friends physically and not just in their virtual world, and that movies are a conduit to allow them to do that. And I think that’s a fantastic sign for the future of theatrical.
What will it take for there to be a $10 billion domestic box office year in 2027 as, I think, Rentrak sees as a possibility?
ARONSON: I think anybody who’s involved in this business has projections as to where a certain period — whether summer of ’26 or the end of 2026 is gonna hit a certain benchmark — but the audience always decides. That’s the long and short of it right there.
I would say what’s interesting about right now is that you have Obsession and Backrooms, but you’ve also had Super Mario, and you’ve got Toy Story coming up, and you’ve got a Minions movie coming up and a solid performer with a Spielberg movie. The business thrives when there’s something for everyone, and I think that’s what we’re seeing right now is that there are films not just in the marketplace for one segment of the audience. So, I would say, throw a couple more Obsession and Backrooms in there and $10 billion’s easy.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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